Pedophiles: Incarceration vs Treatment/Study

[Aaron MkII]

Yes, this is prompted by the recent loli shitshow.

Is there a reason why we stick them in jail to rot (or get shanked) rather then studying and treating them, or searching for treatment? I get that institutions no longer really exist but this seems like we're doing a disservice to all involved with the current system.

[Channel72]

We don't stick them in jail for being pedophiles. We stick them in jail for acting on their pedophilic tendencies. It's the same reason we'd incarcerate a rapist with a hyperactive libido: the fact that the perpetrator may have some exacerbating physiological or psychological condition for committing the crime doesn't change the fact that the criminal is subject to punishment under the law - unless the condition is so severe that the criminal literally doesn't understand he did anything wrong.

Ultimately a large amount of criminal behavior is caused/facilitated by some kind of genetic predisposition towards violence/deviance/lack of empathy/whatever in the perpetrator, and we haven't really worked out all the details in regard to where genetics ends and personal responsibility begins. At this point, locking up offenders is often the only practical solution.

[Aaron MkII]

For the purposes of this thread, I mean people convicted.

[madd0ct0r]

we can do both - stick them in jail and study them. nice controlled conditions, and no ethical issue where you may be exposing innocent members of the public to an not fully understood risk.

[Formless]

I think the answer to your question is that our society takes "you do the crime, you do the time" for granted. Really, how does our criminal justice system respond to anything? Fine people for "minor" offenses, throw them in jail for more "serious" offenses. Even if its obviously a dysfunctional response (such as in the case of drug crimes *) that's how our justice system operates. On top of that, at some point in time Pedophiles became a boogyman, which only further encourages simplistic thinking. So institutionalization-- something which is mainly reserved for certain types of mental illness-- is a hard sell, even if it seems logical.

Of course, in theory you can have it both ways by reforming the penal system to be more about reforming criminals. But that would require changing people's perceptions about prison being the place we send to you get ass-raped, itself a difficult thing to do if for no other reason than cultural inertia.

Ultimately a large amount of criminal behavior is caused/facilitated by some kind of genetic predisposition towards violence/deviance/lack of empathy/whatever in the perpetrator, and we haven't really worked out all the details in regard to where genetics ends and personal responsibility begins. At this point, locking up offenders is often the only practical solution.

Please justify this statement. Using facts, preferably gathered by actual criminologists, sociologists, or psychologists. Biologists with books to sell do not count.



Edit: * well, that was an impressive error. It originally read "jail" where I meant to say "drug crime".

[Channel72]

Ultimately a large amount of criminal behavior is caused/facilitated by some kind of genetic predisposition towards violence/deviance/lack of empathy/whatever in the perpetrator, and we haven't really worked out all the details in regard to where genetics ends and personal responsibility begins. At this point, locking up offenders is often the only practical solution.

Please justify this statement. Using facts, preferably gathered by actual criminologists, sociologists, or psychologists. Biologists with books to sell do not count.

Before I go spend the time to scour the Internet for references, can you explain what you find objectionable about my claim? Are you claiming that there is no genetic disposition towards criminal tendencies, or rather that there is no scientific consensus as to what extent certain genetic markers are correlated with criminal activity? If you are claiming the former, it will be trivial for me to refute your claim. But if you are claiming the latter, I will simply agree with you, and backpedal a bit by amending my original claim to something softer like "Ultimately it's likely that some criminal behavior is caused/facilitated by..., etc."

[Formless]

Ultimately a large amount of criminal behavior is caused/facilitated by some kind of genetic predisposition towards violence/deviance/lack of empathy/whatever in the perpetrator, and we haven't really worked out all the details in regard to where genetics ends and personal responsibility begins. At this point, locking up offenders is often the only practical solution.

Please justify this statement. Using facts, preferably gathered by actual criminologists, sociologists, or psychologists. Biologists with books to sell do not count.

Before I go spend the time to scour the Internet for references, can you explain what you find objectionable about my claim? Are you claiming that there is no genetic disposition towards criminal tendencies, or rather that there is no scientific consensus as to what extent certain genetic markers are correlated with criminal activity? If you are claiming the former, it will be trivial for me to refute your claim. But if you are claiming the latter, I will simply agree with you, and backpedal a bit by amending my original claim to something softer like "Ultimately it's likely that some criminal behavior is caused/facilitated by..., etc."

First, define "large number" and explain what it is "large" relative to. Do you mean to say "most" criminal behaviors? I have a hard time imagining what else you could mean, though you could have meant it in the arbitrary "a number that impresses me!" sense. But if you do mean "most", you obviously do not understand one whit of what you are talking about. The biggest predictors of criminal behavior are invariably social variables such as poverty/class (remember, when the rich steal its called "doing business" ), deviant subcultures and groups, and conflicts between cultural values and opportunity in life. Is poverty genetic? Are racists instilled with hatred before their parents even conceive them? Is white collar crime and other class-linked phenomenon somehow a matter of genetics?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are officially using your asshole as a mouth. That's disgusting, and you should stop.

You see, the problem is that your concession that no specific genetic marker or markers can be linked to criminal dispositions must weaken the claim that "a large amount of criminal behavior" is genetically predisposed (or outright determined). The estimates of how much crime (that is, how many criminals' behavior) can be attributed to genes requires data on criminals' genes, and an understanding of what genetic markers we are looking for. If we do not have either of those data points (and we don't), then once again we arrive at the problem of talking out of your ass.

Now, I admit that my query was really a rhetorical one, since I already know the answer. The scientific consensus among social scientists of the three types mentioned is that genetics plays an inconsequential role in criminality compared to learned behaviors in various forms. That is not to say that there is no connection, since we know of certain personality disorders that are both genetic and risk factors for crime, but to what extent that indicates there are genetic predispositions towards criminal behavior is speculative at best. And, as an aside, its my experience that the people most likely to exaggerate the solidity of that speculation are usually biologists. Which should not be surprising, since they simultaneously have to deal with human behavior when talking about human evolution, but aren't actually taught the same concepts and evidence pools social scientists use.

[Channel72]

Now, I admit that my query was really a rhetorical one, since I already know the answer. The scientific consensus among social scientists of the three types mentioned is that genetics plays an inconsequential role in criminality compared to learned behaviors in various forms. That is not to say that there is no connection, since we know of certain personality disorders that are both genetic and risk factors for crime, but to what extent that indicates there are genetic predispositions towards criminal behavior is speculative at best. And, as an aside, its my experience that the people most likely to exaggerate the solidity of that speculation are usually biologists. Which should not be surprising, since they simultaneously have to deal with human behavior when talking about human evolution, but aren't actually taught the same concepts and evidence pools social scientists use.

Yes, environmental/socio-economic factors certainly have a much stronger correlation with crime than genetic factors. I should have said something weaker like "some criminal behavior may be linked to genetic factors... etc.". But the point, with regard to the OP's question, is that pedophiles are not the only criminals who have some sort of genetic condition (in their case, a deviant sexual orientation) which inclines them towards criminal behavior. For example, studies indicate that MAO-A deficiency is linked with aggressive/violent behavior. So asking "why do we put pedophiles in jail" is merely a specific instance of a much broader problem: where does genetics end and personal responsibility begin? We obviously haven't worked out those details yet, nor, as you said, is our justice system really designed around the concept of rehabilitation.

[Formless]

That's more reasonable. However, I must point out that studying aggression and violence is not the same thing as studying criminal behavior. A lot of aggressive (and even some violent) behavior is not criminal, and there are entire categories of crime which have no violent component (eg. theft, burglary, trespassing, among other things). That's one of those easy pitfalls to run into on this topic, since violent crimes are more memorable than property crimes and so forth.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Now, I admit that my query was really a rhetorical one, since I already know the answer. The scientific consensus among social scientists of the three types mentioned is that genetics plays an inconsequential role in criminality compared to learned behaviors in various forms. That is not to say that there is no connection, since we know of certain personality disorders that are both genetic and risk factors for crime, but to what extent that indicates there are genetic predispositions towards criminal behavior is speculative at best. And, as an aside, its my experience that the people most likely to exaggerate the solidity of that speculation are usually biologists.

You really ought to specify what type of biologist. Geneticists do this because sequence bashing is the only thing they can think of to do. They are so specialized, that they often know little about the organisms they study. They are so good at what they do that they can find genetic correlations to complex behavior that are completely biologically irrelevant and have absolutely no mechanism of action.



You get a biologist who is trained as an ethologist or neuroscientist, you get something completely different. You find that what is actually going on is differential regulation of the same genome, and in turn, affects on the brain that bias decision making within a given social context. For example, high levels of childhood corticosterone causes atrophy in the frontal cortex and weakens someone's capacity to inhibit anti-social behavior. I could go into why this is an adaptive response, and why you end up with a criminal feedback loop among the inner city poor, but that is neither here nor there.

[Formless]

Yeah, geneticists make for the most egregious examples. Ethologists tend instead to make the mistake of projecting the behavior of some species onto others (that is, us) where it may not be appropriate; but they're cool because they are at least aware that it happens and why its poor logic. Neuroscientists are practically a subset of psychologists nowadays, and tend to know a lot about how cognition and mental processes work, so they are cool with me.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Yeah, geneticists make for the most egregious examples. Ethologists tend instead to make the mistake of projecting the behavior of some species onto others (that is, us) where it may not be appropriate; but they're cool because they are at least aware that it happens and why its poor logic. Neuroscientists are practically a subset of psychologists nowadays, and tend to know a lot about how cognition and mental processes work, so they are cool with me.

Well we (ethologists. Though technically, I combine ethology and population ecology...) have to do that to some extent. We cannot, for example, do the same manipulative experiments on people that we can on say... Great Tits. So we have to argue by analogy in a certain way. When you see one species doing a thing, like male lions coming in and killing the cubs of a previous dominant male, and then see a higher rate of abuse and neglect among step children, it is reasonable, though not necessarily completely accurate, to postulate that he two behaviors have the same evolutionary root cause. There are other things in play, human evolutionary baggage and different cognitive processes that have to be taken into account. However, it is a good starting point. That mode of thinking leads to certain predictions, which one can than test, find deviations, and then pass the information on to the neuroscientists (who all read our journals) to see if they can do the comparative neuro stuff we simply dont have the expertise to do.

The geneticists are just off in their own little world. Useful, but they need to have collaborators who have a clue about the organismal and social context of what they are studying in order to not make asses of themselves.

[Formless]

Certainly, there is a method to your madness, a reason you were trained the way you are. But then, that's why its important to know your specialties and what distinguishes them before arguing from authority.

[Thanas]

Well, in Germany we try the treatment and prison plan, but sadly there does not seem to be that good of a plan to correct sexual orientation.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Certainly, there is a method to your madness, a reason you were trained the way you are. But then, that's why its important to know your specialties and what distinguishes them before arguing from authority.

Yes. But there is a reason you dont see me arguing necessarily about genetic causes of crime outside a very narrow range of circumstances (where someone has a mental disorder, the genetic causes of which are understood). When I do talk about causes of crime, it is generally couched in the same terms as the social sciences. Namely, learned behaviors, social context. I interface that with neuroscience (because an ethologist must at least have some decent grounding there), but I know enough to be aware of the... freakish complexity of human behavior. It is not at ALL easy.

The biggest problem for understanding this stuff though is that while humans are animals, most of the research techniques developed for use in animals to understand behavior simply cannot be done, either because the generation time is too long, or because we are not allowed to use them (for good reason). We cannot do Common Garden experiments with controlled mating, for example. We cannot hold someone for their entire lives in a controlled environment to tease out the effects of different variables. We cannot put sat tags in a person to track their movements after bringing them down with tranquilizer... Although that is very tempting to do in order to find my PhD adviser when he misses an appointment without notice. Granted, the use or a radio collar and radio telemetry would be far far more hilarious than a sat tag in that respect.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Well, in Germany we try the treatment and prison plan, but sadly there does not seem to be that good of a plan to correct sexual orientation.

It depends on how early you catch it, and what causes it. Often times (and this is backed up in the psych lit), a kid gets molested by another kid. It is sort of a cycle of unintentional abuse. Sometime up the line, some kid got molested when he was like... six. At that young an age, the trauma is not processed. It is deferred. The six year old has no way to contextualize what happened to him, and he grows up thinking that is just something that is supposed to happen when you are six. So he becomes an older kid, and he ends up molesting a six year old, thinking it is something he is just kinda supposed to do. This can continue for a good number of "generations". If he gets caught and gets treatment, there is little risk of re-offense. A psychologist can help him process the trauma of his original abuse, and it is done. If he gets old enough (and I dont know why this is the case, the mechanism is not known as far as I have found) to start to try and process that trauma on his own, you might end up with a pedophile. Or, you might not.

It does not happen in all cases of child-on-child sex abuse, but I personally have seen it happen twice where the kid got treatment and has never re-offended, once where he didnt and ended up in prison for a looooong time. It is in the literature, and well documented as well. This does not account for all pedophiles either.

It seems to be one of those things with multiple ultimate, and even proximate causes. So, the prospects for treatment may vary between individuals based on their particular psychopathology. Some actually have physical damage to their frontal cortex from head injuries that causes a cognitive defect, for example.

That is my impression anyway. You learn a lot combing through the psych literature trying to refute someone who claims gay people are more likely to be pedophiles...

[Formless]

The biggest problem for understanding this stuff though is that while humans are animals, most of the research techniques developed for use in animals to understand behavior simply cannot be done, either because the generation time is too long, or because we are not allowed to use them (for good reason). We cannot do Common Garden experiments with controlled mating, for example. We cannot hold someone for their entire lives in a controlled environment to tease out the effects of different variables. We cannot put sat tags in a person to track their movements after bringing them down with tranquilizer... Although that is very tempting to do in order to find my PhD adviser when he misses an appointment without notice. Granted, the use or a radio collar and radio telemetry would be far far more hilarious than a sat tag in that respect.

You do realize there are also research methods that can be used on humans that do not work on animals, right? For instance, language gives us a more direct way of observing and interacting with the thought processes of humans; whereas demonstrating cognition in animals required experiments that actively worked around that limitation (the famous mouse in a maze experiment, for instance, was used to demonstrate the cognitive aspects of learning IIRC).

Again, specialty in a related area is no substitute for the actual relevant specialty. Seriously, you're coming off like your defensive about this or something, and I have no idea why.

[Channel72]

That's more reasonable. However, I must point out that studying aggression and violence is not the same thing as studying criminal behavior. A lot of aggressive (and even some violent) behavior is not criminal, and there are entire categories of crime which have no violent component (eg. theft, burglary, trespassing, among other things).

Yes, that's true - and that relates back to my original response to the OP: being a pedophile is not a crime either. Neither is being a particularly violent, aggressive person. It's just that certain expressions of these conditions tend to lead towards criminal behavior. In the case of pedophiles, almost any expression of their sexual orientation is criminal (in the US, at least), including possession of child pornography.

Also, I should mention that there is precedent for institutionalizing and attempting to rehabilitate convicted pedophiles in the United States. See Kansas v. Hendricks, where convicted pedophile, Leroy Hendricks, was committed to a mental hospital by the state of Kansas, under the Sexually Violent Predator Act.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Again, specialty in a related area is no substitute for the actual relevant specialty. Seriously, you're coming off like your defensive about this or something, and I have no idea why.

Naaaaah. I just enjoy pedantic exposition.
Come on man, you should know that about me by now. If I were defensive, I would have insulted you.

For instance, language gives us a more direct way of observing and interacting with the thought processes of humans

Sure, but it has limits. At best, an individual taking to you can reveal what they consciously thinking right before they did X. However, there is a lot of subconscious processing in the back ground, and you might be interested in why they were thinking what they were before they did X. Additionally, they may be lying (intentionally, or not) about what they were thinking. Or they might be rationalizing post hoc. So while useful, that too is limited.

[Formless]

Naaaaah. I just enjoy pedantic exposition.

Funny, I almost always use "pedantic" as an insult. I mean, uh, how far off topic do you want to drag this?

Sure, but it has limits. At best, an individual taking to you can reveal what they consciously thinking right before they did X. However, there is a lot of subconscious processing in the back ground, and you might be interested in why they were thinking what they were before they did X. Additionally, they may be lying (intentionally, or not) about what they were thinking. Or they might be rationalizing post hoc. So while useful, that too is limited.

Actually, I'm of the opinion that what psychology traditionally refers to as "subconscious" is hard to distinguish from "thoughts that the person isn't or has a hard time articulating linguistically", which should be the null hypothesis whenever something is labeled as subconscious. After all, you don't need mental articulation, and in situations where you need to devote more attention to your active responses it may even be a waste of processing power.

But anyway, its still something that we can use to our advantage with humans whether in experiments or other research methods that are unavailable with animals. If I had the time to think about it (I'm currently procrastinating some serious logic homework in my lap right now, so...) I'm sure I could think of others.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Actually, I'm of the opinion that what psychology traditionally refers to as "subconscious" is hard to distinguish from "thoughts that the person isn't or has a hard time articulating linguistically", which should be the null hypothesis whenever something is labeled as subconscious.

I refer to subconscious not in some sort of jungian way, but in the same way you dont sit there and think "now I move this foot forward" while walking. When someone says "Person X made me afraid, so I stabbed him" he is not aware of everything in the background of those thoughts. He is not aware that his amigdyla processed a stimulus and flipped the fight or flight switch to Kill and sent the message to his motor cortex, while the frontal got the same message, tried to countermand the order, but failed to sufficiently stimulate the motor cortex to act as a cognitive veto.

The person is only aware of the results, not the processes that took place to get there, like why the frontal cortex was not able to veto the motor cortex, and that includes the evolutionary processes that might bias how the parts of the brain respond in a given instance. For example, someone's natural child takes a cookie before dinner and gets a good stern talking to, while the step-kid gets smacked around for exact same offense. Why the difference? Well, he wont be able to tell you why beyond the step-son making him more angry. The interesting question is Why, and that cannot be answered by simply talking to someone. You need experiments or very very rigorous observation regimes, that are difficult if not impossible to do with people.

Funny, I almost always use "pedantic" as an insult. I mean, uh, how far off topic do you want to drag this?

Hey, I am OK poking fun at myself. I know I have a tendency to go on and on and on about certain things, reveling in my knowledge base which forms the basis for most of my self esteem. I am also overly concerned with fine detail. If it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and swims like a duck, then it just may be prudent to consider the proposition that we have a medium sized semi-aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.

However, it is not as far off topic as you might think. How one goes about learning about crime, and how pedophilia is caused is germain to a thread on why they get thrown into a cage and punished rather than put behind a glass wall and studied/treated.

[Formless]

The interesting question is Why, and that cannot be answered by simply talking to someone. You need experiments or very very rigorous observation regimes, that are difficult if not impossible to do with people.

No, but that's why we have experiments; furthermore those experiments can utilize language to reveal things about human (and therefore animal) thought that would otherwise be inaccessible data. For instance, research into the phenomenon of "flow" was possible because of studies wherein participants documented their everyday experiences to identify when it was happening and what it was like. There are also experiments into motivation and creativity which drew out the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation *, which were possible because you can give human experimental subjects complex instructions as part of the experimental setup. I notice you omit that experiments can be done on humans, as long as ethical constraints are observed.

* Important IMHO, because a lot of times biologists tend to assume extrinsic motives as a default due to the mechanisms of evolution that lead to adaptation being extrinsic.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I notice you omit that experiments can be done on humans, as long as ethical constraints are observed.

Well sure. I omitted it because I was talking about research tools that are highly valuable that we cannot do. The most powerful experiments for looking at ultimate causal mechanisms such as evolutionary processes, and a lot of stuff in genetics, development and many (but not all) things in neuroscence, require procedures we cannot ethically do in people. Plane and simple. If I want to know the genetic causes of homosexuality, I cannot do the simple thing, find candidate genes, and create a knockout fetus. If I want to experimentally show that the differences in neuro-anatomy common in violent criminals or sociopaths are actually causally related, I cannot do brain lesion studies, or subject children to certain stimuli.

There are plenty of experiments that CAN be done, but a great many highly illuminating ones that we simply cannot unless we want to become Mengele.

[Formless]

My point is that there not only are experiments/research techniques that can be done, they are often things that could not be done (or would not be easy to do) on any other animal. Actually, since it's been mentioned brain imaging is one of those things-- not that you can't do it on other animals exactly, but it is easier by far to get a human to cooperate with the researcher and get into the big bulky and claustrophobic machine (if you've ever been in an MRI for whatever reason you probably know what I mean) than it is to get a dog to do the same. Exact difficulty may depend on the type of imaging.

And hey, if you want to know more about humans, study humans. That too. Seems relevant, since this thread was supposed to be about crime (esp. pedophilia) and the justice system.

[Alyrium Denryle]

And hey, if you want to know more about humans, study humans. That too. Seems relevant, since this thread was supposed to be about crime (esp. pedophilia) and the justice system.

Naturally. And my point is that some techniques that would be really useful cannot be done with people. Two sides of the same coin, I guess. I cannot easily get a (conscious) dog into an MRI and see what parts of the brain are active when I ask it to solve moral dilemmas. I also cannot fence off neighborhoods in NYC, introduce guns i half them, and directly compare the effect of guns on crime while controlling other variables.

To get back on track, and bridge the two topics...

Part of the problem with devising a treatment for pedophilia is that unlike a lot of other mental disorders like depression or schizophrenia there is no animal model (mice in both cases). One of the reasons why we have effective anti-depressant drugs and anti-psychotic drugs is because it is possible using mice to directly examine both anatomical and neuro-chemical causes of the pathology using experimental protocols that we could not use on human beings for a huge range of technical and ethical reasons.

This is a problem, and it really hampers efforts to treat pedophiles. We are left with two options. Chemical castration, and cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Chemical castration is effective at reducing recidivism, but can have some really nasty side effects and may not itself be ethical. While cognitive therapy is not overly effective. We also cannot "study" a prisoner without their consent, and it is unethical to do research on a captive subject pool. They might be pedophiles, but they are still human beings.

So, you are left with a public that is justifiably angry at people who sexually abuse children, and no good treatment prospects. So... they get tossed in prisons.